The Enchantress of Florence
Salman Rushdie
Jonathan Cape, Rs 595
Salman Rushdie affords enchantment enough but it is just too many tales for one novel
Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world.” That’s what Salman Rushdie heard in the drumbeats of Gunter Grass’ great novel, The Tin Drum.
No matter what your estimate of him, from the highs of Midnight’s Children or The Moor’s Last Sigh to the lows of Fury, there’s no denying that Rushdie has abided by the manifesto.
His tenth novel, The Enchantress of Florence, is no different, despite the fact that he forays into an all-new territory and period. At the centre of the novel is the tautologically titled Akbar the Great, the Mughal emperor who seeks not only power, but also glory; groping for his own definition of humanism and “worship as argument” at a time when the Spanish Inquisition is on in full swing in Europe. “In the Tent of the New Worship the Winemen and the Waterers were calling one another heretics and fools. The emperor wanted to confess his secret disappointment in all mystics and philosophers. He wanted to sweep the whole argument aside, to erase the centuries of inheritance and reflection, and allow man to stand naked as a baby upon the throne of heaven.” Rushdie’s Akbar is a fantasist, drifting away on lonely dreams even as he wages bloody wars and subdues kingdoms. He mulls his own singularity, and the plurality of all identities, on argument and worship, on love. He falls in love often and intensely, but his heart belongs to his phantom consort, Jodha. Everyone else at the court conspires in this great feat of projection, and even as the emperor knows he’s invented her, he loves her for his very frailty in the face of her.
